My review can be summed up as:
Wow.
In a very competitive 2012 book market, this vaults to number two on my list (The Righteous Mind is still number one). Without referring to Charles Murray, Moretti blows Coming Apart totally out of the water, replacing Murray's moralistic sociology with solid economics.
I have written some long posts about books, but I could not possibly cover this book in a blog post. I almost don't know where to start. Excerpts and comments below the fold. By the way, there are some flaws, in my view.
Also , Bryan should be worried. Moretti comes down very hard in favor of the benefits of education, notably college education, and those of us who are on the skeptical side of that debate will have to pay attention to his analysis.
Also, the way he goes about illustrating his points is captivating. He takes on Richard Florida's "cultural creatives" theory by describing Berlin, where the culture is avant-garde but the economy does not produce enough exports to sustain itself (it gets by on tourism and government transfers). Moretti describes the change in job structure through the lens of a Philip Roth novel, and this approach works well.
Moretti weaves together many important phenomena--economic growth, education, inequality, and trade. I have not seen any advance hype for it. As far as I am concerned, it deserves plenty. Definitely read it.
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